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The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to investigate the interpersonal communication skills that human resource (HR) managers expect managers in supervisory positions possess. Second, to identify which of these skills HR managers expect managers use to engender subordinate commitment to the organisation. Third, the paper aims to investigate what interpersonal communication skills that enhance employee commitment to the organisation are most lacking in managers in supervisory positions.

The approach of the study is a series of in‐depth interviews with 32 senior HR managers in organisations with over 100 staff.

The paper finds that senior HR managers expected managers to be effective in interpersonal communication focusing mainly on the clarity and frequency of the messages, their ability to actively listen and the ability to lead in a collaborative way. The way messages were sent, especially their clarity, and a leadership style that engendered trust, was of the highest importance when HR managers wanted to enhance employee commitment to the organisation. However, these skills were also the ones found most lacking.

HR practitioners need to consider more explicitly what behaviours are important to promote organisational commitment.

This paper highlights that the interpersonal communication skills that enhance organisational commitment and are most valued by organisations are those that are most lacking in managers. This paper also provides insight for practitioners to the interpersonal communication skills areas that managers need to develop so that their interaction with staff may enhance commitment to the organisation.

Communication in any organization is a complex phenomenon. Public schools are people‐centered enterprises in which the primary tasks of teaching and learning are accomplished verbally. Within each school, the principal is uniquely positioned to regulate these communications activities. The research reported here sought to examine how five school principals managed communications in their schools. Three major questions guided the research. What are the preferred modes and levels of communications activities utilized by principals? What are the major messages communicated through various modes and at different levels by principals? What do the communications activities of individual principals tell us about how principals interpret their leadership role in school, how they set administrative priorities, and how they put their beliefs and values into practice? The findings indicate that the communications activities of school principals are dominated by dyadic interpersonal contacts. The major purpose of these dyadic interpersonal exchanges were maintenance messages which related to policies, procedures, and regulations for organizing, operating and perpetuating the school. As an adaptation to the nature of a principal's work life, each principal demonstrated a pragmatic preference for accomplishing his/her communications through talk even when written messages or other mechanisms for message delivery would have been more efficient. Finally, the principals believed that the success of their communications activities in school was characterized by openness, honesty, high visibility, and the ability and capacity to listen.

This paper aims to examine how trust and communication at the personal level relationships conform to trust and communication at the organizational level relationships and which role do the two different level relationships play in influencing firms’ commitment, performance and propensity to stay in long-term relationships.

A face-to-face questionnaire study was conducted using a sample of 209 in Mainland China companies, which were surveyed in nine exhibitions. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results support the bottom-up effect of interpersonal trust and communication on inter-organizational trust and communication. Interorganizational trust has a more powerful total effect on firm commitment. Interpersonal communication has a more powerful total effect on inter-organizational trust and communication and firms’ operational performance. Interpersonal communication, inter-organizational trust and communication have comparably high impacts on firms’ propensity to stay in long-term relationships.

This paper selects Mainland China as the research context and targets a single boundary spanner in each respondent firm to evaluate both the interpersonal and inter-organizational relationships. A cross-sectional approach was used.

This paper suggests that business people should pay attention to the role of human factors in a firm’s relational exchanges with SC partners and effectively use the positive effects of these factors to create relationship-building benefits.

This paper conducts cross-level research, which has been called for in recently published inter-organizational literature. It develops and provides empirical evidence for a bottom-up model from interpersonal relationships to inter-organizational relationships and identifies their impacts on organizational outcomes simultaneously.

This study aims to explore how transformational leaders enhance public service employees’ growth satisfaction in the job and mitigate job stress and burnout, incorporating follower interpersonal communication satisfaction with the leader (IPCSL) as a mediator.

On the basis of the survey data collected from the Indian public service employees, regression analysis, bootstrapping and SOBEL test are used to test the proposed research model.

The findings highlighted a partial mediation of follower interpersonal communication satisfaction with leader between transformational leadership (TL) and public service employees’ growth satisfaction in the job. Although there was no significant direct effect of TL on job stress and burnout, the results underlined a significant indirect effect of follower IPCSL.

By examining the important role of follower IPCSL, this study unravels the precise intervening mechanism between TL and follower affective outcomes like growth satisfaction in job, job stress and burnout among public service employees.

The purpose of this article is to examine the communicative factors that facilitate or hamper the development of an inclusive work environment with an emphasis on the communication about equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), while taking diversity characteristics of employees into account.

In total, 84 persons employed in Austria and Germany, who feature various observable and non-observable diversity characteristics, were interviewed following a problem-centered approach.

The results indicate that employees with (observable) diversity characteristics, who tend to feel less included, observe more excluding and marginalizing communication and practices in their organizations. Moreover, formal interpersonal communication appears to be more important to develop a highly inclusive workplace than informal interpersonal communication and other forms of communication about EDI.

The sample was rather imbalanced and comprised only employees in Austria and Germany, which limits the study's explanatory power. However, the findings stress the significance of formal interpersonal communication as the cornerstone of an inclusive workplace, which should be followed up in future research.

In terms of the development of an inclusive work environment the findings suggest that strategic (i.e. formal) organizational communication about EDI issues is key to increase the perception of inclusion.

This paper contributes to the literature by demonstrating the importance of interpersonal communication as a key factor that facilitates, but also hampers an inclusive work environment.

This paper assesses whether communication via interpersonal and IT channels accounts for short-term financial performance and long-term orientation and how these effects are influenced by contract completeness and technology usage in platform builder-platform participant relationships.

The conceptual model and hypotheses are validated through a moderated regression of 384 survey responses from platform participant.

The empirical results indicate that interpersonal and IT-enabled communication contribute to both short-term financial gains and long-term orientation. The coexistence of interpersonal communication and IT-enabled communication has a synergetic effect on long-term orientation. Contract completeness positively moderates the effect of interpersonal communication on short-term performance while negatively moderating its effect on long-term orientation. Furthermore, contract completeness undermines the effect of IT-enabled communication on short-term performance. Technology usage enhances the effectiveness of interpersonal communication in generating long-term orientation.

First, diverging from the extant research treating communication as a single dimension construct, this study differentiates communication on media channels and shows their separate and synergetic effects on short-term performance and long-term orientation. Second, our empirical findings indicate that the effects of communication are influenced by governance practices, which extends the communication literature. Third, previous studies have presented conflicting results concerning the role of governance mechanisms in inter-firm relationships. By showing that governance mechanisms also either support or suppress communication in generating performance for platform participants, this study extends the existing research on governance mechanisms. Finally, by regarding technology usage as a transactional governance mechanism, this study furthers our understanding of the role of technology in interfirm relationships.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationships among information‐seeking behavior, interpersonal communication, perceived procedural justice, and the reduction of job‐related uncertainty.

The sample consisted of 323 Japanese white‐collar workers who completed the questionnaires, with a usable sample of 295.

The results of covariance structure analysis (SEM) revealed that: there were not any direct relationships between information‐seeking behavior and the reduction of work‐related uncertainty; information‐seeking behavior induced a change of voice, explanation, and rational interpersonal communication from decision makers; the provision of voice, explanation, and social sensitivity from decision makers caused outcome recipients’ perception of procedural justice; and their perception of procedural justice caused the reduction of job‐related uncertainty.

There are some limitations of the present study that can be addressed in future research. First, the concept of uncertainty might have been used too broadly to have been applied to the concept of job‐related uncertainty. Second, the respondents in the present research were highly educated white‐collar workers and were selected to attend business school by their companies.

The results of the present study have some practical implications. Under a newly introduced managerial system of performance‐based personnel practices, Japanese companies need to establish a system by which workers can form judgements of fairness.

The paper suggests that one must exercise caution when generalizing the findings of the present study without taking into account the characteristics of the respondents.

The primary objective of this research is to test a model examining interpersonal trust between marketing managers and R&D managers during new product development projects.

In this study interpersonal trust as a bi‐dimensional construct with cognitive and affective components is conceptualised. The authors' integrative structural model specifies Weber's structural/bureaucratic dimensions – formalisation and centralisation to predict three communication dimensions, communication frequency, quality, and bi‐directionality. In turn these communication dimensions are used to predict cognition‐based trust, and affect‐based trust. In addition, the paper models the direct effects of the three communication dimensions on a dependent variable – perceived relationship effectiveness. The hypothesised model consists of 16 hypotheses, seven of which relate to the two focal interpersonal trust constructs. The measures were tested and a structural model estimated by using PLS. Data were provided by 184 R&D managers in Australia, reporting on their working relationship with a counterpart marketing manager during a recent product development project.

The hypothesized model has high explanatory power and it was found that both trust dimensions strongly influenced the effectiveness of marketing/R&D relationships during new product development, with cognition‐based trust having the strongest impact. The results also reveal which forms of communication help to build interpersonal trust. The most powerful effect was from communication quality to cognition‐based trust. The next strongest effects were from bi‐directional communication, which was a strong predictor of affect‐based trust, and a somewhat weaker predictor of cognition‐based trust. Interestingly, the direct effects of our three communication behaviours on relationship effectiveness were modest, suggesting that their relationship building effects are largely indirect. Last, it is revealed that bureaucratic means of control on product development projects have mixed effects. As expected, centralisation reduces cross‐functional communication. In contrast, formalisation has a positive effect during product development, as it stimulates both the frequency and bi‐directionality of communication between marketing managers and R&D managers on these projects.

This is the first study to treat interpersonal trust as the focal construct in marketing/R&D relationships during new product development. Moreover, it is the only study of marketing/R&D relationships to conceptualise, measure, and model two underlying dimensions of interpersonal trust (cognition‐based trust, and affect‐based trust). Our study also integrates aspects of Weber's theory of bureaucracy, with interaction theory, and demonstrates the strong links between these theoretical frameworks.

During the 1990s the value to an intending professional accountant of undertaking a period of liberal (general) studies was promoted internationally by a number of individuals and organisations, including the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (the “Institute”). The Institute significantly changed its admissions policy for Chartered Accountants in 1996 and one change was to require four years of degree level study with a compulsory liberal studies component. This study surveys the perceptions of New Zealand accounting practitioners on the impact of this compulsory liberal component. The results of this study demonstrate that there is little support from accounting practitioners for IFAC’s claim that liberal education “can contribute significantly to the acquisition of professional skills”, including intellectual, personal and communication skills. In addition, the majority of respondents did not perceive any improvements in the professional skills of the staff that had qualified under the Institute’s current admissions policy. However, any perceived improvements were mainly attributed to the Institute’s admissions policy change. Notwithstanding the lack of support for the assertion that liberal education develops professional skills, there is a strong belief by respondents in the value of liberal education for intending professional accountants.

This study found that 10 of 16 measures of interpersonal communication showed statistical significance between male and female administrators in a university environment. Using the FIRO‐B questionnaire, females preferred to initiate more inclusion and affection in interpersonal activities; also, they wanted other people to include them and to be friendly to them in inter‐personal relationships. Beyond the comparison of males and females, however, it is evident that all scores (both male and female) exist within the mid‐range categories. Thus, it is concluded that interpersonal communication capacity is lacking throughout the sample, and definite actions are needed to increase interpersonal communication effectiveness in organisations.